• Methodology

Methodology

This paper provides a snap shot of some of the current initiatives or approaches to developing peace and conflict impact assessment‘ (PCIA) methodologies. It provides an overview of three approaches to PCIA:

• those that deploy standard donor evaluation criteria;
• those that develop methodologies for assessing the peace and conflict impact of development and humanitarian programming by multi-mandate organizations; and
• those that focus explicitly on interventions by NGOs with specific conflict resolution and peace-building aims.

The review indicates that current efforts at developing PCIA methodologies are slowly grinding themselves into the ground. A more hopeful reading points instead to the inroads that are slowly being made in efforts to articulate the details of a workable PCIA approach. It emphasises the growing number of cases in which the nascent approaches are actually being applied to real situations.

However, in the process of developing and refining a truly workable PCIA approach, there are a whole range of issues that will need to be addressed:

• the first is the issues of indicators. If the desire is to move away from inappropriate evaluation methodologies and criteria, and transcend the constraints of logframe methodology and similar approaches, then part of making a convincing case for alternative approaches is the articulation of usable criteria and indicators
• second, practitioners pursuing PCIAs must develop a far more sophisticated sense of the linkages and interconnections that properly exist between the different types and levels of evaluations
• third is the need to further develop an understanding of contexts, conditions and circumstances and of the effect that these can have on the likelihood of positive impacts
• fourth is the need to develop an agreed and well-differentiated account of both the different sectors of PCIA and the dynamic interaction between them
• finally, in pursuing all of this, it is important to recognise need for proportionality and humility with regard to peace-building endeavours, and especially about the claims about their measurable impact and to our capacity for their effective evaluation

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